Graphic design has long been a part of businesses' marketing campaigns across industries. Despite this, only a few companies truly realize the power of visual identity. Even fewer know how to hire a graphic designer that can genuinely elevate their marketing strategies to boost their revenue streams!
Fortunately, Wing Assistant can help you find the perfect graphic designer for your company. Unsure about why you should get a dedicated graphic professional? Read more about why you need one, and how to find the best one for your business!
How to Hire a Graphic Designer: Why Bother?
Visual elements like images, infographics, and other graphic designs have the power to establish a company's brand identity. While all businesses can sell products, only a few can tell a story. Visual storytelling can foster customer loyalty that will encourage consumers to buy your products and create a lifestyle around your offers.
The digital era has successfully revolutionized the world of marketing. Gone are the days when it was all about making posters featuring your products. Now, consumers are exposed to hundreds of advertisements daily, and in order to get an edge over your competitors, your assets have to be memorable and effective.
Customer engagement and conversion rates are two of the most efficient ways to measure a successful campaign. In order to achieve these two, you have to find the right graphic designer that can create marketing assets that will truly resonate with your customers.
What Are the Essential Skills and Expertise of a Graphic Designer?
Now that we've established the importance of graphics designs, the question still stands: how can businesses find the right graphic designer that will strengthen their brand? To help you with this, we've come up with a list of factors you should consider when hiring a graphic designer.
Proficiency in design software and tools
There's no denying that the digital era has made graphic designing a lot more complicated. Gone are the days when graphic artists just had to be good with their pencils to create effective marketing materials. An artist's proficiency in design software and tools such as Adobe Creative Suite, Sketch, Canva, and more can ensure your company can create future-proof marketing materials that will stand out among your competitors.
Strong understanding of design principles and aesthetics
An excellent graphic designer doesn't just make visually appealing assets. They ought to have a strong grasp of numerous design principles and aesthetics. Graphic designers should know how to harness colors, typography, layouts, and other visual elements to communicate a message to potential customers.
Knowledge of current design trends and industry best practices
The marketing industry has never been more volatile. With the rise of Artificial Intelligence (AL), Machine Learning (ML), cloud computing, and other marketing software, companies should ensure that all elements of their business are future-proof, including your visual team.
Your graphic designs should go beyond the latest design styles, techniques, and other artistic trends dominating the market today. They should know how to spice things up so your brand can provide something fresh and innovative to your consumers.
How to Hire a Graphic Designer: Defining Your Needs
Just like any business decision, hiring a graphic designer should come with ample planning. Here are some things you should prepare before hiring your graphic designer:
Assessing the specific design requirements of your business
As mentioned a while ago, your graphic designer can help you establish your brand identity. With that being said, it's essential to find an artist that will resonate with your business's overall aesthetic. Remember that while graphic design is inherently a creative job, it should still follow the objectives and goals of the company.
Identifying the areas where a graphic designer can make an impact
One of the most common mistakes of businesses when hiring graphic designers is expecting their artists to do everything. While there are definitely some graphic designers that can be considered a jack of all trades, the most effective ones have a specific niche. That being said, it's imperative to first identify the area of your business where your graphic artist can truly deliver results. Would that be for social media, UX design, UI design, or product design?
The answer to this question, of course, should be in accordance with your company's data. Check which marketing channel needs a visual boost to drive more conversions.
Determining the scope and frequency of design projects
The popularity of remote work and freelancing has changed the landscape of employment. Now, companies are free to implement cost-effective hiring procedures that will boost the productivity of their businesses without creating that much change within their organizations.
Before creating a job post for a graphic designer, determine if you need a short-time contractor or a full-time team member. This will depend on the number of graphic designs you're planning to create.
How to Hire a Graphic Designer? Nail the Job Description
Your job description can make or break your marketing efforts. It can dictate whether you'll get someone who can deliver high-quality visual assets or mediocre ones. Here are some of the best practices when writing an effective job description that will land the perfect graphic designer for your team.
Highlighting key skills, qualifications, and experience
Be straight to the point on what you need. Be specific about the skills, qualifications, and experience you're looking for. This will not just give you an opportunity to easily find the graphic designer you're looking for, but it will also help job hunters create accurate expectations towards your job post.
Aside from listing down the qualifications on your job post, make sure that you have fully optimized it depending on the job hunting portal you're using. Platforms like LinkedIn and Indeed allows you to categorize your job post so you can easily reach talents that might be fit for the role.
Specifying the desired design expertise (e.g., branding, web design, packaging)
Some of the most experienced graphic designers have their own niche. While there are some that can pretty much do everything, some opt to expand their portfolio to a specific category. For instance, graphic designers who can do great on branding might struggle with the technicalities of web designing. Some artists are great with digital products, while some shine with physical ones. For this reason, it's best to specify the design expertise you're looking for.
Communicating your company culture and values
Today's generation is a lot more sensitive regarding the culture and values of the companies they work for. They ensure that the businesses they would apply to would align with their visions and goals. For this reason, it's imperative to share this kind of information within your job posts. Don't worry; it can be beneficial for you, too. This will allow you to find employees that would not just render their services but would be fully committed to your business.
How to Hire a Graphic Designer through their Portfolio
A graphic designer's portfolio should be the main factor in your hiring process. While interviews, tests, and other personality assessments can weigh their professionalism, it's their portfolio that can truly show you how much they can contribute to your company. Here are some tips when assessing the portfolio of your candidates:
Evaluating the designer's past work and design style
When it comes to hiring graphic designers, employers should be sensitive to their past work and design style. This is the best way to assess if their style can fit your overall brand aesthetic. Sure enough, graphic designers can manipulate their style depending on your requirements, but it would be more efficient and effective to find an artist that can already create assets that will resonate with your audience.
Looking for versatility and the ability to adapt to different projects
Versatility and adaptability are two of the most important factors you should consider when looking for creative talents, including graphic designers. This will ensure that they can create marketing assets that will be consistent and coherent with your brand.
This can be truly detrimental to your company. They may be able to produce creative assets, but they may be inconsistent with your brand. This will create visual confusion among your audience, reducing your brand recall.
Assessing the designer's ability to align with your brand's visual identity
Most importantly, the portfolio of your chosen applicant should express their ability to communicate your brand's visual identity. They shouldn't just create visually appealing assets, but they should tell your company's story. Remember that inconsistent use of graphic designs can be truly detrimental to your company. It can create visual confusion among your audience, reducing your brand recall.
How to Hire a Graphic Designer by Assessing their Technical Proficiency
Technical proficiency should also be a deciding factor when finding the perfect graphic artists for your company. Here are some ways to measure how tech-savvy your candidates are:
Reviewing the designer's knowledge of design software and tools
Proficiency in popular design software such as Adobe Creative Suite, Canva, and Figma should be non-negotiable. You ought to find a graphic artist that can deliver satisfactory results regardless of the medium required by your clients.
Aside from this, it's also best to ensure that your graphic designer has enough technical knowledge to adapt easily to your company's CRM, management tools, and other on-prem solutions.
Evaluating their understanding of file formats and printing processes
For sure, all marketers have experienced having a corrupted file at least once throughout their careers. Everyone knows how counter-productive it can be. While it's common among marketing teams, it's definitely avoidable.
To ensure that it will happen less (or not at all) within your team, ensure that your creative talent understands the various file formats and printing processes you might need within your company. You don't want to find the perfect graphic designer and eventually lose all their work!
Assessing their ability to deliver designs in various digital and print formats
The print medium is not dead. It remains to be an effective marketing stream that can effectively drive conversions and revenues for companies. Whether you're a B2B, SaaS, or eCommerce brand, make sure that you find a graphic designer that's well-versed in both digital and print marketing formats. This will help you ensure that you can maximize all possible marketing channels when connecting with potential clients.
Collaborative Skills and Communication
As mentioned a while ago, while graphic design is inherently creative work, it should still be governed by business goals and objectives. For this reason, it's imperative to find graphic designers that can efficiently collaborate and communicate with your team.
Here are some of the best practices when assessing your candidates with regard to collaboration and communication:
Evaluating the designer's ability to understand and interpret client briefs
You won’t be worrying about how to hire a graphic designer if you get it right the first time around. And the way to do that is to select someone who understands a client brief. If possible, ask your short-listed candidates to provide client briefs alongside their portfolios.
If the briefs are not available, it's best to ask them for a short trial to assess if they can create assets in line with marketing goals and objectives. Remember that when assessing their work, you should focus on how consistent they are with your briefs more than the overall creativity of their work.
Assessing their communication skills and responsiveness
Like any business position, it's imperative to do a short interview with your candidates. While you don't necessarily have to evaluate their fluency or candor in speaking, you should make sure that they can properly communicate ideas and thoughts within a team. During this phase, it's best to ensure that you have a friendly yet professional tone, so they can comfortably express themselves.
Looking for adaptability and openness to feedback
Ultimately, you should ensure that your graphic designer is willing to revise their work when needed. Unfortunately, there are numerous graphic designers and creative talents that can be adamant with their work. Regardless of how creative they are, it's best to pass on these candidates as they may not be able to help you achieve your business goals.
No More Wondering How to Hire a Graphic Designer with Wing
Graphic designs are more than just decorations for your marketing campaigns. Finding the right graphic designer is crucial in all companies, whether you're a small to medium-sized business or a big corporation. Each visual asset can help you strengthen your brand identity, communicate a message to your audience, and, most importantly, drive revenue for your business.
We know that it's easier said than done. Hiring the correct graphic designer can be tricky and laborious. Fortunately, Wing can help you find the perfect graphic artist for your marketing needs. With our fool-proof virtual hiring process, you will have a graphic designer that will help you reach your business objectives.
Aya is Wing Assistant’s blog manager. When she’s not wrangling content briefs, editing article drafts and handling on-page SEO, she is crafting messages for Wing’s other communication materials. Aya writes about SaaS startups, marketing for startups, search engine optimization, and pop culture.
